Curbing Sexual Harassment in the Legal World

Published: November 9, 1990

Other firms with such codes include Faegre & Benson in Minneapolis; Troutman, Sanders, Lockerman & Ashmore in Atlanta and Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy in New York. Embarrassing Entanglements

"The young women who are professionals today are very sensitive to the issue, unlike the generation that went before them, which survived and achieved in spite of all the degradations they were subjected to," said Alexander D. Forger, Milbank's managing partner, who noted that embarrassing entanglements "can develop even in a white-shoe, money-driven, factory-like law firm."

Many of the firms adopting anti-harassment codes have large labor law practices, and are merely creating for themselves the kind of policies they recommend to clients.

"I don't think we have a problem, but I think it's important to have a policy in case there is one," said Gordon J. Quist, managing partner of one such firm, Miller, Johnson, Snell & Cummiskey in Grand Rapids, Mich.

Not all complaints concern lawyers in private firms. In 1988 a Federal court in Washington ordered back pay and a promotion for a lawyer at the Securities and Exchange Commission who contended that her refusal to participate in pervasive sexual escapades in her office impeded her advancement. Lawyer-Judge Relationships

There have also been episodes involving opposing counsel and between lawyers and judges. In a survey taken last year, 19 percent of the female lawyers in Maryland said they had been sexually harassed by judges. In one recent case, a Washington lawyer successfully appealed an adverse ruling partly on the ground that the judge handing it down was a "piqued suitor."

Paul Hastings, a 400-lawyer firm based in Los Angeles, boasts of having "one of the largest employment practices in the United States." According to the firm's literature, 85 of its lawyers work in the field, and the man who began the department, Leonard Janofsky, is a past president of the American Bar Association.

The firm, which has 18 partners who are women, an unusually high number, enacted a policy against sexual harassment several years ago.

The complaint by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the firm comes in the case of Sheila Donahue, a 40-year-old lawyer who now works in Westchester. Ms. Donahue, a divorced mother of two who put herself through Cornell Law School, joined the New York office of Paul Hastings when it opened in the fall of 1986. Many 'Unwelcome Comments'

According to the commission's complaint, a Paul Hastings partner, Ronald P. Mysliwiec, subjected Ms. Donahue and other women at the firm to "numerous unwelcome comments about his sexual experience and desires," and referred to them as "toots," "honeybunch," "little girl," and other "more vulgar and derogatory terms."

In October and November 1987, the complaint said, Ms. Donahue told partners at the firm about Mr. Mysliwiec's conduct. But the harassment continued, the complaint said, and within a few weeks the firm "retaliated" by giving her a marginal performance evaluation only seven months after she had been deemed "fully acceptable."

Shortly after she received the marginal performance evaluation, the complaint said, she was told she had no longterm future at the firm.

Another woman who, according to the complaint, had been harassed by Mr. Mysliwiec resigned in December 1987, and a third was dismissed in March 1988. Ms. Donahue resigned a month later. What the Case Is Not

Ms. Donahue declined to comment on the case. Neither would Mr. Mysliwiec. The lawyer representing Paul Hastings in the case, Mark S. Dichter of Morgan Lewis & Bockius in Philadelphia, stressed what the case is not.

"This does not involve any claims of quid pro quo harassment, any demand for sexual favors or any claims of touching, but is essentially a claim of inappropriate language," he said. "Our position is that whatever occurred here does not rise to the level of sexual harassment under the law."

Lawrence Ashe, a partner in Paul Hastings's Atlanta office who is overseeing the case, said the commission had not interviewed Mr. Mysliwiec before filing its complaint. "They've heard only one side of the story," he said, adding that Mr. Mysliwiec had "said nothing that you couldn't hear in a locker room or at many movies."

"Which locker room? The New England Patriots?" said Ms. Donahue's lawyer, Norman Bloch of Manhattan. When the facts of the case come out, he said, "even the most macho litigator will be shocked" by Mr. Mysliwiec's conduct.

Photos: A complaint filed on behalf of Sheila Donahue, above, is one sign of growing concern among law firms and the organized bar about sexual harassment (S.M. Cooper); "Professionals today are very sensitive to the issue," said Alexander D. Forger, left, the managing partner of Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, a law firm in New York (Sara Krulwich/The New York Times)